


His 'n Hers

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x11, A.W.O.L., Angst, Descriptions of gunshot wounds, Descriptions of surgical scars, Discussion of scars/wounds/injuries, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Disability, Some Self-Hatred, Some internalized ableism, body image issues, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some couples have matching towels, but they’re not like those couples. </p>
<p>They have matching scars instead.</p>
<p>Set during 4x11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His 'n Hers

Bodies were strange, Felicity decided.

An illness, an injury, eating too much Big Belly Burger and mint chip ice cream - these could all change your body. Make it something you didn’t recognize anymore. And this could both empower and, if you let it, destroy you. It could give you a weapon and, simultaneously, be your biggest weakness. 

Over the last few weeks, Felicity had come to appreciate just how true that was. 

When she woke up in Star City General Hospital after the shooting - _the bullets, the limo, the engagement, their thwarted celebration plans,_ Oliver - without the ability to walk, or move her legs at all, Felicity thought that this....condition, this new physical impairment that she had, would cripple her. 

That it would destroy her.

All because of one man, his personal vendetta against Oliver, and his desire to see Star City burn to the ground. 

She’d seen the latticework of ragged scars that covered her fiance’s skin many, many times. She was intimately familiar with their shape, their feel under her fingertips, which ones were smooth and which were rough. She knew how they caught the light when the lamps were dimmed, sculpting his body in light and shadows like a classical painting. She knew which of them were sensitive, and would provoke a reaction from him if she touched or kissed them.

He’d told her once that he’d avoided mirrors when he’d first got back from Lian Yu. In fact, he had avoided looking at his reflection, period, especially when he wasn’t fully clothed. He’d told her that he wouldn’t even look at himself when he showered, the sight of the torn, lacerated, burned skin turning his stomach and reminding him of everything he’d suffered.  

She had started to understand the feeling, in those first few days and weeks after being discharged from the hospital. And for the first time, Oliver’s experiences didn’t seem quite so alien. 

The truth be told...it scared her. Much more than she was willing to admit. 

Being in a wheelchair, being unable to _move_  - those weren’t things that she had foreseen for herself when she thought of her future. It hadn’t been the “next step” she had imagined for herself when she’d knelt down under that gazebo and said yes to Oliver’s proposal. 

Then again, she hadn’t counted on Darhk’s men waiting in the shadows for the right opportunity to strike, either. 

She would never walk down the aisle, now. 

She would never get a first dance with Oliver, the man she so desperately loved, as husband and wife. 

Would he even want to still marry her, now that she was...well, like _this_?

_“For better, for worse.”_

At the time, she’d believed him when he’d said he wouldn’t leave her side again. When he’d slipped her engagement ring back onto her finger in her hospital room, cradling her hand in both of his, she’d believed that they could survive this. 

Felicity loved him. So, _so_  much. She’d loved him since before she even knew that she did. Maybe she’d been falling in love, minute by minute, hour by hour, ever since the day they’d met at Queen Consolidated. 

There had been no doubt in her mind that she would accept his proposal. It had never been an option. Being with Oliver like that, for the rest of their lives...it was everything. 

_Unthinkable_ , she’d once thought of it as. Her and Oliver, together. The idea had been laughable, incomprehensible to even her genius mind. How ridiculous, she thought, the idea of her and Oliver as a couple. It was laughable. Of course it would never happen. Who were they kidding? 

She’d been lying to herself, then. As had he. She’d imagined it, at the time, more than she had dared to admit. She now knew, of course, that he had been imagining it, too.

Over the last few months - ever since they’d left Star City to go on an adventure that was solely their own - what had become unthinkable is that they would ever be separated. 

Until she was told by her doctor at Star City General that she would never walk again. 

Right there, in that moment, Felicity hated her body. She hated it for not working. She hated it for being broken. She wanted the use of her legs back, dammit! It wasn’t _fair_. 

She’d had other thoughts, too. Less than nice ones, ones that she would never divulge to Oliver because of the guilt and shame they instilled in her whenever they pushed themselves to the surface. 

There had been times, since waking up in the hospital and then when she was discharged and allowed to go home, when she’d been angry that Oliver had escaped Darhk’s attack with nothing but a few shallow cuts on his hands from the broken glass, and she had ended up...like _this._

There were times when she resented him for emerging practically unscathed while she was in a wheelchair for life. 

These thoughts made her feel awful, and awful for thinking them, but still they crept up on her when she woke up each morning and remembered that she couldn’t wiggle her toes anymore, the way she always would as part of her morning waking-up ritual. She couldn’t bop her feet to the music on her iPod or attempt to slide across the kitchen floor in her socks whenever a song she _really_  liked came on the radio. 

(Okay, so she’d tried that _once_. She ended up crashing into the fridge and almost smacking her nose on the countertop, and needed to be rescued by a still half-asleep Oliver who’d come to investigate the source of the commotion.)

But there were good things, too. Oliver looked after her. More than she ever expected he would, or would want to. He brought her blankets and coffee, and cooked her delicious meals, and made sure she took her medication. He massaged her feet every night to keep the circulation going and dutifully helped her to and from the bathroom those first few days and nights when she was still getting used to her wheelchair and hadn’t quite mastered the upper-body strength necessary to maneuver her own body weight yet. 

There was something about having your significant other watch you pee that was both singularly embarrassing and, as it turned out, had its own kind of closeness and intimacy. 

Whoever said that the, _ah_ , intricacies of marriage had to start _after_ the actual wedding?

In those moments, she was never more grateful to have someone like Oliver, so kind and generous and thoughtful, who was so wonderful in a million different ways. 

Someone who _cared_. 

He was so willing to take care of her - and put up with her whenever she got cranky and frustrated. He never pushed or confronted her, but simply waited for whatever bad mood she was in to pass. In the meantime, he would still bring her coffee and her favourite mint-chip ice cream, give her backrubs when she asked for them, and give her full control of their Netflix account. 

She liked that. And yeah, okay, maybe she was taking advantage a little bit - but those were the privileges of being his fiancee. It would be rude to pass them up. 

It made Felicity proud to wear his ring on her finger. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly low, confined to the couch and binging on _Scandal_ , she would look at her ring, and the way it sparkled in the light, and how freaking _gorgeous_ it was, and it would be a reminder to her that what she and Oliver had was real. It was happening. It was their reality now. 

They were getting _married_.

And yet...at the back of her mind, there were still these ugly thoughts. What if Oliver got tired of waiting on her? What if he got bored of playing domestic carer, and decided that he didn’t want to stick around? What if she became too much of a burden for him? 

Would she be able to survive that?

Oliver had once told her that the Chinese word for “survive” was  _shēngcún._ It was one of the first words that had been spoken to him when he’d washed up on Lian Yu. It was also the word he’d heard most frequently. 

She’d liked the way it sounded.  _Shēngcún._ Or maybe she’d simply liked the way he had pronounced the foreign sounds, the way his voice changed when he spoke something other than English. When they’d been away from Star City on their epic Summer of Love (or so she had called it, in her own mind), he had read to her often from a small book of Russian poetry he’d somehow acquired, and she had loved to listen to him recite the words, the way they rolled off his tongue as if he had been speaking the language his whole life. 

_Shēngcún._

Survive.

But what was the point of surviving if you weren’t whole any more?

What was the point of getting through the bad times when you were missing half of yourself, half of your body - half of who you were?

Sitting on the edge of their bed, dressed in an old baby pink sweater and loose black yoga pants - easier to put on by herself, because there were roomy and soft - she wrung her hands in her lap and furiously blinked back the tears that sprung to her eyes, determined that Oliver come back from the bathroom and not see her cry.

She wanted to be strong.

Felicity _needed_  to be strong.

When she heard the _snick_  of the lock on the bathroom door sliding open, she quickly wiped at the stray tears on her nose and chin, pushing her hand through her hair and forcing a too-bright smile that pulled painfully at her cheeks. 

“Hey!” she called, too cheerfully, too optimistically, as Oliver emerged from the bathroom, bringing with him a lazy smile, the familiar smell of his soap, and the sharpness of spearmint toothpaste. “You all done?”

“Yeah,” he said softly, his voice sweet and kind, crossing the space between them and bending to press a kiss to her hair. He smelled like clean cotton and residual sweat from standing in a steam-fogged bathroom; for a fleeting moment, she longed to press her cheek to his chest and just let him hold her for a while, a longing that ached in her chest and made fresh tears sting her eyes. 

It didn’t escape Oliver’s notice.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, low and gentle, and she felt the mattress dip beneath her as he sat beside her. He brushed a damp curl of hair away from her face and came to rest his hand on the base of her spine, where she could just about still feel the pressure of his fingers. 

“It’s nothing,” she sniffed, shaking her head. “It’s silly.” Agitatedly, she wound her engagement ring round and round her finger, making the diamond disappear and reappear with every turn of the thin silver band. She had done this three times when Oliver covered her hands with his own, effectively stopping her compulsive fidgeting. 

“Hey,” he said, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze, “talk to me.”

Felicity shook her head again, more vigorously this time. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t want to say it out loud. You’ll hate me.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s possible,” Oliver chuckled. “I could never hate you.”

“You might,” she said, quiet as a mouse, and for the first time since he’d walked into their bedroom, she looked at him. _Really_ , really looked at him.

He was the same Oliver she’d always known, with or without the hood and mask. Impressive physique and kind eyes, a gorgeous smile and a laugh that made Felicity think of sunshine. 

But she felt her throat constrict as she forced out the words she wanted to say, pouring out her darkest thoughts...and, since the accident happened, her biggest shame.

“I’m sorry,” she choked, tears slipping down her nose. “I’m so sorry, Oliver.”

She saw the confusion on his face, the innocence in his ignorance, and it only served to twist the knife further in her chest.“What? Why? You haven’t said anything yet.” 

“For thinking how unfair it was that you got off Scott-free from Darhk’s attack, while I’m stuck like _this_...” 

Oliver’s entire expression changed, from bewildered confusion to a kind of sadness that Felicity felt as deeply in her own bones as he did in his; she saw the raw pain in his eyes, and she closed her own so that she didn’t have to look at the hurt on his face at the oppressive secret she had just divulged.

“I told you it was horrible,” she whispered, tears dripping off her chin and soaking her sweater; she made no effort to wipe them away, and neither did she want to. 

She felt awful. She _was_  awful. 

“You can start yelling at me now if you want,” she said. “I can take it. I know you’re probably angry with me for even _suggesting-”_

“Felicity...” Oliver sighed, cutting her off. It was a sad sigh. “Let me show you something.”

There was a rustle of fabric and a creak of the bedsprings, and the soft thud of something hitting the floor; she cracked open one eye and saw that he had removed his shirt. 

“Now you,” he said softly, his expression intense but otherwise unreadable, and she obediently lifted her arms so that he could pull her sweater over her head. She was left in a plain black bra and her pants, the angry red bullet wounds and smaller, thinner surgical scars standing out against her stomach and back. 

“Lie down with me.” It was an instruction, not a question, and although guilt burned in her stomach at what she had said, she let herself by guided onto the bed, Oliver’s hands hot on her waist and ticklish on the sensitive areas where her scars were. 

He put one arm under her legs and swung her up onto the mattress, and she almost giggled at the swooping sensation of the sudden movement, well-practiced and easy for someone with the upper-body-strength of a bull; then she was being laid down on the soft duvet, on her side, so that they were facing each other. 

“What do we do now?” Felicity asked, her hands folded on the pillow, under her cheek, like a child. 

“I want you to look at me,” Oliver said, “and tell me what you see.”

Felicity frowned in puzzlement. “I see my ridiculously handsome fiance. What’s your point?”

Oliver shook his head. “That’s...not it,” he replied, slowly, like he was choosing his words very carefully. “I want you to _really_ look at me. And tell me what you see when you do.”

Barely a flinch, Oliver glanced down at his own body. She wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching his face so intently, the way he quickly looked down and then back up again, a literal blink of an eye.

_Oh._

_“_ You mean your scars,” she said quietly, realizing what it was he was trying to say. Oliver made a noise of affirmation in the back of his throat. “But what does that have to do with us?”

_What does that have to do with_ me _?_

_“_ You once told me that I had battle scars,” he said, and Felicity was struck with a memory from seven months ago, before they had taken up (semi)permanent residence in Ivy Town; they were lying side by side, just like this, her head on his chest as she traced a finger from scar to scar and asked him where he’d gotten each one. She’d then replaced her finger with her lips, each kiss a healing touch, to soothe his pain and make him see that the marks on his body weren’t ugly or shameful or disturbing. “And so do you.”

Felicity snorted, a stray tear finding its way down her cheek. “I don’t think so. I’m not brave like you. I didn’t get my scars from fighting, like you did.” She swallowed. “If anything, I got them from _not_  fighting. From letting Darhk win.”

“I don’t believe that,” Oliver said firmly. “You’re brave, Felicity. You always have been, ever since I met you. That hasn’t changed.”

He moved to brush his hand over her bare, sensitive skin, his touch as light and soft as a butterfly’s wings. He found each individual gunshot wound and surgical incision, taking the time to press the pads of his fingers to each one. His fingertips barely touched the raised wounds, but it was enough to make a lump rise in Felicity’s throat and goosebumps erupt across her stomach and back. 

“Oliver-” she began, but her cut her off again, spreading his hand over the expanse of her back, his warm palm covering the scars from the multiple surgeries, gentle on the tender skin. 

“These scars, that chair...they’re not bad things. They’re just things that you happen to have because of something that you went through. It took me a long time, after the island, to come to terms with the fact that _I_  looked different now. I had to accept that I wasn’t gonna look the same ever again, and it wasn’t an easy thing to do. There are still times when I get up in the morning and I don’t wanna look in the mirror. And I may have escaped Darhk unscathed, but there’s so much more that I still have to deal with. So whatever you might feel, you’re not alone in this.”

“I love you so much,” Felicity choked out, blinking as tears flowed down her cheeks for the third time that night. It was all she could bring herself to say. When it came to being engaged to Oliver Queen, she was the luckiest woman alive. Nobody compared to him. Nobody ever had, and nobody ever would. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“You’d still be Felicity Smoak,” Oliver replied simply. “You don’t need me around to make you strong.”

“It helps, though,” she giggled wetly, making Oliver laugh right along with her. 

“I’m not gonna argue with that,” he smiled. 

“And hey, at least we can tick off another thing on the list of Ways We’re Not Like Other Conventional Couples,” Felicity said. “We have matching scars.”

She had expected Oliver to protest, or get defensive, as soon as the words left her mouth. After all, scars were not monogrammed towels. They weren’t a cool and cute aren’t-we-so-disgustingly-in-love accessory. They were received in pain and suffering, and never really went away. 

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, that smile still on his lips. “We do.”

“S’better than monogrammed towels,” she quipped, shrugging the shoulder that wasn’t pressed to the mattress. “A lot more badass.”

“Well, now I know what _not_  to get you for our first wedding anniversary,” Oliver joked. 

Felicity sighed. “I cannot wait to be married to you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Oliver agreed.


End file.
